


we do not dare to hope

by xylodemon



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Baggage, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:05:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles helped open this door. All he can do now is wait to see what comes through it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we do not dare to hope

**Author's Note:**

> Partially inspired by [this Tumblr post](http://perseused.tumblr.com/post/58189738116/turning-the-nemeton-into-a-sort-of-hellmouth-esque), which talks about the nature of the Allison/Scott/Stiles sacrifice. 
> 
> This is not a happy story. Spoilers for _Alpha Pact_.

The weather changes after the nemeton ritual, turns darker and wetter and colder. Global warming is the new science, the bit in every politician's teeth, but Beacon Hills sees sudden wind storms and record lows, dull skies and a rainy season that stretches from October to May. Stiles doesn't notice it at first; he's too caught up in everything else that's going on. He spends Halloween baiting fairies into a mountain ash trap and Mother's Day flushing kobolds from an abandoned campground. Mudslides wipe out the new gated community on the edge of town, and the creek swells past its banks, rising high enough to flood long stretches of Las Flores and County J.

An uptick in crime follows, everything from vandalism and petty theft to burglary and arson, and Stiles' dad works late nights and double shifts, his face wooden as he climbs into the cruiser, a shuttered apology when he comes home after three straight days at the station. He blames Jennifer's sacrifices for the change in currents, and the truth sticks in Stiles' mouth, tastes like another reason for his father to drink. He keeps the broken sheriff's badge in the bottom drawer of his desk, hidden under his werewolf research and Lydia's handwritten translation of the Argents' bestiary.

"It'll get better," Scott insists, but his voice is an open wound. He looks lean and hungry and washed out, his mouth tight and a careful slump twisting the line of his shoulders, and Stiles wonders how it is for him, if he feels it the same way as Stiles, a cold and constant weight, frozen water pouring down the back of his shirt, icy fingers squeezing as they wrap around his throat. 

The moon waxes and wanes. Peter mellows. Cora heals.

A chupacabra migrates into the forest preserve, drains twenty deer and three humans before Derek and Isaac rip out its throat. A hunting party disappears after disturbing a nest of trolls, and Stiles mixes gunpowder with mountain ash and belief, burns his left hand sparking it into lightning with a set of jumper cables and a battery from Mrs. McCall's car. He buys a new bat, learns how to use a knife. He reads German fairy tales and Icelandic sagas, studies folklore and mythology and ancient religions, dreams of goblins and hydras and chimeras and rougarous, of a dead tree with gnarled, reaching roots and an invisible door he can never close.

Allison chops off her hair, short like her mother used to wear it, short enough that it won't swing into her eyes during a fight, and Scott curls in on himself, his laughter as dry and brittle as old bones, a muscle ticking in his jaw as evenly as a bomb. Stiles goes to school on autopilot, exhaustion blurred beneath his skin and shadows waiting under his eyes. The other students watch them in the halls, spreading rumors like wildfire -- drugs, crime, cults, black magic -- and Stiles would laugh if the ache in his chest left him enough room to breathe, knows the truth would only endanger someone, draw unwanted attention, make him sound as crazy and disconnected as he already feels. 

Stiles makes out with Isaac on his eighteenth birthday and with Lydia on hers, walks away from both of them with a bad taste in his mouth, something cold and dark and uncertain, a bitterness that makes him think he left too much of himself in the water when he drowned. He can't relax, feels like he'll never be able to settle. His resting pulse is faster now than it was before the nemeton, often seems irregular and tight, like his heart is beating inside a clenched fist, hammering against a scar.

He doesn't mean to start fucking Derek; it just kind of happens, another unexplained occurrence, another supernatural anomaly, a car crash that smashes into him around the running and the violence and the fear. Derek kisses Stiles the night he should be celebrating his high school graduation, nudging Stiles back against the jeep with a growl, his fingers twisting in the pockets of Stiles' hoodie and his face still red and sticky with wendigo blood, and Stiles mumbles _yeah, okay, okay_ against he sharp curve of Derek's mouth, lets Derek slide a hand over his knee as he drives them back to the loft. Derek sucks a line of dark bruises over the jut of Stiles' collarbone, his hands heavy at Stiles' hips, his claws leaving tiny pinpricks on Stiles' skin, and Stiles comes easily, his face hidden in the hollow of Derek's throat, warm for the first time in months.

They don't talk about it. Stiles figures there really isn't anything to say.

A selkie turns up in the creek, luring three men underwater before Isaac and Peter tear out its heart. Two third-grade girls are nearly kidnapped by a woman in broad daylight, and Stiles raises a barrier around the elementary school, lining the foundation with mountain ash and spells while Derek tracks a huldra through the forest preserve. Winter comes again, dark and rainy and cold. They fight an incubus, an eloko, a shui gui, and a breeding pair of dips, and they fuck in the back of the jeep and on the lumpy, naked mattress that passes for Derek's bed, out in the woods and up against walls, anywhere but Stiles' bedroom, the last place that still belongs to him alone. 

"We should leave," Lydia says one night, her voice a surprise in the slow silence of the cemetery, her eyes barely flickering to Stiles' face as she tracks the movement of the stars. She has lost ten pounds in the last year, maybe fifteen, looks whittled down to nothing, all long lines and deadly angles. "We should to go Los Angeles or San Diego. Somewhere with beaches and sunshine."

Shadows dance around the tombstones, stretching with the twist and sway of the trees, and Stiles thinks of all the dinners his father has missed, and the typhon that nearly crushed Cora's skull, and the thirty-seven stitches Mrs. McCall put in Allison's thigh, and the lacrosse scholarship offer to Duke hidden under Scott's bed, and the noise Derek makes when Stiles bites the inside of his thigh, throaty and low, almost warm enough to chase the constant chill away from Stiles' skin, to ease the memory of a cold hand grabbing at his throat, holding him down. 

They haven't seen the sun in weeks, probably won't until the first days of June, but Stiles has scars on the palm of his hand, two round dimples left by the points of his dad's badge, the last thing he'd held onto as he died, as his heart stopped echoing in his ears.


End file.
